Article in English Language Teaching · May 016 doi: 10. 5539/elt v9n7p120 citations 73 reads 23,812 author

4. Practical Implications of Using Games to Teach Vocabulary 
4.1 The Implementations of Teaching Vocabulary Using Games 
There are two steps that must be kept in mind when implementing games to teach vocabulary to young learner 
by their teacher, grouping the students and giving explanation and instruction about the game. This section will 
briefly mention those steps.
4.1.1 Grouping the Students 
Scott & Ytreberg (2004) stressed the importance of making young learners sit together in a group because they 
like to have other peers around them. Sitting the students together encourage cooperation, but this does not mean 
that they have to be in groups all the time while they are working. Phillips (1993) noted that having a group of 
more than five students will result in counter-productivity where chaos might emerge. Teachers could ask their 
students to count one until two in a sequence manner and students with the same number will gather in the same 
group on the floor. Next, young learners could be asked to choose a name for their group to be written on the 
white board to record their scores. If there is an uneven number of student e.g. five students, one group could 
have 3 students and the other two. Grouping techniques of this kind will help in create a cooperative and 
competitive atmosphere among the members of the groups. 
4.1.2 Giving Explanation and Instruction about the Game 
It is important to explain the game to young learners in order to achieve the desired outcome and fulfill the goal 
behind its implementation. Teachers have an integral part in the classroom when implementing games because 
they have to give clear explanations and instructions about them so that students understand how to play and 
practice the list of vocabularies intended to be learned.
If the teacher did not explain the rules and instructions of the game, choosing games as a method to explain 
vocabulary to young learners will be a waste of class time. There will be no outcomes if the students did not 
know what to do and they will get bored very fast. 

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English Language Teaching 
Vol. 9, No. 7; 2016 
124 
4.2 Five Games That Can Be Used in Teaching Vocabulary to Young Learners
 
Games, as stated before, are interesting methods to teach young learners vocabulary. They help students in 
learning their vocabulary effectively without boredom and they will acquire the lessons easily. For the reason of 
space, the games that will be discussed in this section are Hot Potatoes, Memory Challenge, Last One Standing, 
Pictionary, and Bingo.
The first game is called 
‘Hot Potatoes.’ 
The class is divided into group A and B with both teams sitting on the 
opposite sides of the classrooms. Two chairs will be placed in the middle of the class so that whoever sits on the 
chair will face her/his team and the board must be behind the them. Then, their teacher writes a word on the 
board, but the student on the chair will not see it. Each team will have one minute after signaling the beginning 
of the game. The other students are allowed to use verbs so that their seated teammate can guess the word written 
on the board. They should not say the exact word written on the board. 
‘Memory Challenge’
is another game that could be used to teach vocabularies to young learners. Students have 
to sit in pairs or form small groups. Each group is given three minutes to write down as many words as they can 
remember from their previous lesson e.g. animals. The group that recalls most words will win the game.
The third game is 
‘Last One Standing’ 
where a topic is given to the children e.g. fruit. They have to stand up in a 
circle and the teacher count to three and give out the topic. After that, the first student in the circle will have to 
give a word related to the topic and so on. The students who can not say a new word or repeat the words of the 
last student has to take a seat. The last student standing will be declared the winner. 
‘
Pictionary’
is the fourth example of games that could be used to teach vocabulary to young learners. The class 
have to be divided into two teams. Each team will sit on the opposite side of the classroom. One student from 
both teams will be asked to come to the board where the teacher will give out a word or phrase for the student to 
be drawn on the board as a clue. The team who can guess the word will get the point. 
The last game to be discussed is called 
‘Bingo.
’ In this game, the teacher writes 10 words on the board and every 
student choose five words and write them down. After that, the teacher selects one word in a random way 
without saying it and give the students its definition or synonym. If a student guessed the right word, he or she 
should shout BINGO! and wins the round.